4 ms·
Ironically, of course, Popperian falsifiability is itself unfalsafiable, and therefore does not meet its own definition as a member of itself. Popper knew this
by hprotagonist 6y ago
Ironically, of course, Popperian falsifiability is itself unfalsafiable, and therefore does not meet its own definition as a member of itself.
Popper knew this, by the way. So the inverse to the trap you point out here is the claims that "if not falsifiable, then unable to be true/useful", which is just as specious.
- seanwilson 6y agoIsn't this like saying if X is an axiom and you can prove Y via X, you shouldn't trust Y is true because you can't prove X is true? What systems for determining the truth exist that aren't built on top of some fundamental axioms?
- hprotagonist 6y agonone; you have to at least claim as an axiom "axioms are things that can be claimed" -- but that's not what's under discussion here: logic and math are neither of them empirical sciences, after all. my point is that "we define science as empirical falsificationism" is itself nonscientific by its own definition, and that that's OK, still capable of being true, and is a handy way to get stuff done.
- andreskytt 6y agoThat’s where Gödel’s theorem comes in. There’s always axioms unprovable without expanding the system
- wurp 6y agoGoedel's completeness and incompleteness only apply if the initial set of axioms is powerful enough to express addition over all the integers.
- _nalply 6y agoAha! Now that's why some people say that science is a religion, too.
- sameerds 6y agoI always allow for the possibility that science is a faith (not religion) simply because there is no way to prove that the universe actually obeys laws that we can discover. Just because an apple fell down in the same way in each of a million experiments, it's not necessary that the relationship we discovered is a "law" that defines the universe. It could just as well be that the next time we try it, the apple falls differently.
- ceilingcorner 6y agoThis is called the problem of induction and is indeed fundamental to the scientific method. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction
- hprotagonist 6y agoit helps to translate “faith” as “trust in something, in which we can ground actions taken”, instead of “[intellectually] believing what we know ain’t so” and in that framing, yes, any endeavor requires an act of faith.
- hprotagonist 6y agofor much more, https://philpapers.org/rec/HAASSO https://philpapers.org/rec/HAASSO but at this point i would say that "religion" is a very squirmy thing to define meaningfully without a lot of "well, but except when ..." clauses tacked onto the end.